With the Tibet issue still fresh, China is looking to become more and more controversial, this time in cybercrime as the database of a prominent British organization was hacked by Chinese spammers over the weekend, TheRegister reports.

IT personnel at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) discovered that the hackers were able to place a Web address in the members’ database, prompting them to take down access to the said database for some time. Although RIBA assured its more than 40,000 members that no information has been stolen, they advised their members to remain cautious of online financial information that they may have used for transactions with RIBA.

RIBA did not comment on the encryption and other security measures used by their database. The incident has since been reported to the local police although their involvement may not be helpful at all unless there’s a cybercrime division or a similar unit. Furthermore, since the database breach has already been reported, it remains unclear as to why RIBA refused to comment on their encryption measures. This action puts them in a bad light, raising serious questions on their system security.

Around 1,200 similar organizations have also been targeted in the US and the UK. This figure just shows that data breaches are very critical issues that have to be dealt with utmost priority. Companies cannot afford to be unworried with data security while at the same time declaring nothing has been stolen. Such complacency may eventually prove to be their undoing.

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